The Enron Corp. whistle-blower who warned higher-ups that the energy giant’s shady accounting could ignite a major scandal also told an auditor at Arthur Andersen about her concerns, it was revealed yesterday.

Capitol Hill lawmakers probing the collapse of Enron obtained a memo that recounted the conversation between worried Enron vice president Sherron Watkins and a partner at the Big Five accounting firm.

The disclosure is sure to turn up the heat on Andersen, which has already admitted its Enron auditing team destroyed thouands of documents after learning that federal regulators had launched a probe into the company’s finances.

Earlier this week, Greenwood and Rep. Billy Tauzin (R-La.) released an August letter Watkins wrote to Enron chairman Ken Lay, warning him an accounting “hoax” -special partnerships that hid massive debt -could doom the Texas-based company.

Andersen honchos in Houston and at the Chicago headquarters were told about Watkins’ letter at a Aug. 21 meeting, Tauzin spokesman Ken Johnson said.

That disclosure came from Andersen partner David Duncan, who was axed this week for allegedly ordering the destruction of the Enron documents and who was grilled by eight House Energy Committee investigators for four hours yesterday.

“The plot keeps thickening,” Johnson said, adding that Duncan “cooperated fully” during the informal interview and will be a key witness at upcoming committee hearings.

Also yesterday, White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said economic adviser Larry Lindsey and his aides were just “doing their jobs” when they studied Enron’s situation as the Houston-based behemoth struggled for survival.

“The economic team had conversations with themselves to explore this, not in reaction to any phone calls they had with Enron officials,” he said.

“But as they took a look at what was publicly known at the time with the collapse of Enron, they asked the very logical question, ‘Could this have a broader impact on the economy?'”

Fleischer could not say whether Lindsey was aware Enron executives had contacted other administration officials, including Treasury Undersecretary Peter Fisher, for help, but the outcome was the same in any event.

Both Fisher and Lindsey -who got $50,000 from Enron in 2000 for serving on a company board -decided a collapse would not hurt U.S. markets and that a government bailout was unnecessary.

A morass of potential conflicts of interest has cropped up involving Enron.

In the latest, the Center for Responsive Politics noted that Tauzin received almost $50,000 in contributions from Andersen between 1989 and 2001 -more than any other member of Congress got.

“One thing that is clear is that there is nobody on Capitol Hill walking around with clean hands on this one,” center researcher Holly Bailey said.

Tauzin has been leading the charge against Enron, Andersen and the suspect accounting methods that hid billions of dollars in debt until the company collapsed -burning thousands of investors and employees.

It was also disclosed that Enron lobbyist Michael Lewan, who served three years as Sen. Joe Liberman’s chief of staff and remains a political adviser, met three times with the senator’s staff and unsuccessfully tried to arrange a meeting between Lay and Lieberman.

The number of government investigations of Enron continued to grow yesterday when the Senate Finance Committee said it would examine whether the firm used tax shelters to mask its financial condition.